Policy Analysis

Some analysts have voiced disagreement with the view that Damascus and Moscow are truly at odds.

Understanding how Salafi leaders balance ideological robustness and personal risk as they are validated or threatened by local circumstances might be a good place to start in assessing their future approach to political engagement.

Although Ankara has the necessary parliamentary authorization and professional military capacity to establish a safe zone, it would still need Western intelligence help, air support, and diplomatic backing to cover the operation and deter Russian retaliation.

Joint support of Basher al-Assad's regime has highlighted Moscow and Tehran’s developing political alliance. In contrast, the level of economic cooperation between the two states has historically been very modest: 2014 trade between the two countries amounted to $1.68 billion and was just 0.2% of all Russian foreign trade. Yet

UN Security Council Resolutions 2170, 2249, and 2254 offer ample grounds for establishing a zone to protect refugees and counter the Islamic State, but shaping the international diplomatic response would be paramount given the legal gray areas inherent in such action.

In times of crisis, individuals rise up to act as their society’s conscience. These individuals work to alert the international community to human rights violations or work tirelessly to help their community recover from major obstacles, natural or man-made. These protectors are civil society activists, community mobilizers, and independent journalists

However difficult it might be to implement safe zones after years of inaction, the humanitarian disaster will only grow without them, as will the threat to regional and European stability.

There is no doubt that Egypt faces a slew of challenges and potentially dire consequences related to the Renaissance Dam that Ethiopia is currently constructing at the headwaters of the Nile. Some politicians and media personalities have attempted to characterize the construction of the Renaissance Dam as a side effect

The Kurdish issue in Turkey stands on the precipice of becoming an international problem, involving all sorts of nefarious actors from the Syrian civil war.

The lifting of international sanctions and the region's vastly changing geopolitical environment have opened a window of opportunity for Tehran to buy potent arms from Russia and modernize its arsenal.

Western policy must be precise and consistent in its use of terms, objectives, and methods in order to account for differing local perceptions.

Explore the roles of Salafism, jihadism, nationalism, and other movements as drivers of conflict and alliance post-Arab Spring.

For such zones to succeed, they must be backed with militarily enforced no-fly zones and a persuasive response to Moscow's inevitable small-scale violations and disinformation campaign.

Saudi Arabia today is trying to unite the Arab world, while countering Iran in Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere, and also coping with an oil price that remains stubbornly weak.

Once again, Moscow has expressed agreement with the United States on the broad principles for easing the Syrian conflict and then acted without regard to those principles.

Riyadh's offer to deploy ground troops in Syria and reestablish air operations comes while its forces are still heavily committed in Yemen and a huge military exercise begins in the kingdom's north.

The victors, winnowed from an especially large field, will serve until 2024 and therefore may play a role in choosing a new Supreme Leader.

Establishment of humanitarian corridors, safe havens, safe zones, or buffer or no-fly zones could turn the tide of Syria's humanitarian crisis, but it could also pose numerous complications and create second- and third-order effects for the region.

Understand the policy implications of humanitarian safe havens, safe zones, buffers, or no-fly zones in Syria with these assessments of the who, what, where, why, and how of the various options.

The Assad regime's Russian-aided military campaign and the onset of spring augur another mass refugee flow into the EU, and the only surefire way to stop it is by addressing the root of the crisis inside Syria.